Friday, January 15, 2016

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the world's leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality, and Swami Atmarupananda, renowned teacher of Hinduism, will talk about Compassion as being intrinsic to who we really are -- the true Self, the "image of God" which is free of all alienation. And that is wisdom itself; love itself, discovered in inner silence -- the still point that unites us to both God and the universe.

"There's several ways that we can overcome the walls of the ego. And the first question, why do we have to overcome the walls of the ego? You have to overcome it because it suffocates us, because we suffer from it. The Dukkha, by which the Buddha speaks, has to do precisely with this. If we could be happy in the prison of the ego all religion would be useless. And in fact nobody would have followed it over the millennia. Anything that has been followed over the millennia must have had some use, otherwise people wouldn't follow it. If honey didn't taste sweet, every civilization would not have honey one way or another in its diet. This is the same way. This is a very, very important point. So since we cannot be happy in this prison of the ego, our spirit is made for the infinite. It's not made for the bottom of a well. Since we're not happy there's several ways in which this wall, or borders of this limited ego, this limited existence in which most of us live, can be removed. There's not only one. One is of course through pure knowledge, the path of the Vedanta, which we have the equivalence in Sufism." - Seyyed Hossein Nasr (34:04 - 35:35).